


Live or Die, Let it Snow

by blueincandescence



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Past life, Snowed In, Steve's Pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-04 03:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13355088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: Stranded in Siberia after an extraterrestrial mission gone wrong, Steve comes to terms with Diana's love for the long-dead man who shares his name and his face.





	1. A Good Death

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long-overdue wondertrev holiday exchange fic for dreamer-wisher-liar. She requested a snowy cabin locale and a modern Steve who doesn't remember his past life.

Steve is pretty sure he is about to die in a fiery crash.

He has been pretty sure of this fate multiple times in his life. Like the time he strapped bricks to the pedals and stole his great-uncle’s creaking crop duster. Or the time he reenacted the magic carpet scene from _Aladdin_ with one hundred million dollar piece of machinery. Or that hour-long dogfight over Kandahar. The first mass-scale alien invasion of Earth.

He didn’t die any of those times. Probably should’ve. Didn’t.

But lucky streaks don’t last forever. And now Steve is hurtling out of a boom tube from outer space at a kabillion miles an hour. He’s strapped to a chair engineered for a pilot with tentacles. No power to the thrusters, back or front.

The ground rushing up to meet him is capital-E Earth. The scanner tells him he’s on a collision course with Siberian mountain peaks—craggy and treacherous but, hey, at least it’s home. A small comfort, which he’ll take.

Because, again, Steve is about to die.

* * *

That’s what Steve signed up for when he joined ARGUS. Almost certain doom was the vibe Director Waller was going for when she spelled out the stakes to the handful of recruits who made it through each training cycle.

ARGUS operatives have to be the best and brightest humanity has to offer, Waller told them, because humanity has been rendered insignificant.

Superhumans are among them.

There aren’t many. Which is why they need a logistics team. They aren’t perfect. Which is why they need to be kept in check. They are neither invulnerable nor omnipotent. But they are the only beings standing between Earth and certain invasion.

So ARGUS operatives make a pledge—protect _them_ at all costs.

Steve signed up to die for any of one them. Not like he has much choice in assignments, but when all is said and done, which it probably will be very soon, he’s glad it’s _her_ he’s dying for.

* * *

Wonder Woman, alias Diana Prince. The demi-goddess of truth. Princess of the Amazons. The heart of the Justice League. One of two who remembers to say _please_ and _thank you_. The only one who can light up time and space with a smile.

Out of respect, Steve has kept his distance. Even as her ARGUS liaison. He shoved aside a grainy photograph, refused to play the part Waller set him up for. He averted his eyes whenever Diana’s became luminous with pained disappointment.

He never lied to her about who he is and never could be.

He kept his admiration to himself.

He jumped into an alien spacecraft to give her ten seconds of distraction as she faced down a supreme alien being alone. He dropped his way-beyond-nuclear power source to pause an army in their sprint to reach the boom tube.

Just before his hijacked spacecraft fell through an interdimensional void, Steve saw Diana finish off the would-be alien overlord with a burst of red-hot light. So he knows Diana will make it to the boom tube in time. She will seal it for good and forever.

Diana will save the world. Again. And again and again.

Today, Steve will have helped.

* * *

Steve is terrified and sad and exhilarated. So he laughs.

He’s not laughing in the face of death. He’s never been that brand of tough-guy cool. He’s laughing because he’s alive and he lived and this is a good death.

There are regrets, sure. He wishes he had more…time, he supposes. To do new things, travel to new places. Spend more quality time with more people. His parents. His sister. His buddies…

 _Her_ impossibly beautiful face comes to mind, but his regret for Diana is different. He wishes for less time. Less time she spent with that other man, the one with his name and his face. If she didn’t love _him_ so much, maybe—

Moments from death is a bad time to kid himself. Diana Prince, let alone Wonder Woman, wouldn’t spare him a glance if he weren’t some tragic mistake of a doppelganger.

That other Steve died for her, too, he knows from the briefing. Best he can say for the guy is that at least he had his priorities straight.

This is a good death. His father would be proud, Steve tells himself as the spacecraft breaks into Earth’s atmosphere. The ship shudders and shakes. His mind plays tricks on him, seeming to slow his descent into the inevitable.

Blue sky and white snow fill his field of vision. Steve takes one last look, one last steadying breath, before closing his eyes and bracing for impact.

* * *

Only there is no impact. The slowing Steve felt stretches out so long he feels time has stopped. He cracks an eyelid, almost expecting a red suit and a smirk. What he sees is the round nose of the spacecraft inches from hard packed ice.

Both eyes wide open now, Steve watches the ground go parallel as the back of the craft gentles onto the ground.

Shock doesn’t get a chance to set in before the skylight brightens with the swirling energy of a reawakened boom tube. Steve flounders with the unfamiliar straps, hits all the buttons in front of him in search of a door.

The skylight rips off its hinges and Wonder Woman leans into the opening, chest heaving, actual sweat on her brow.

“Steve!” Diana screams his name like no one has ever done before. She screams his name like a woman who just threw herself into an interdimensional void. Like a woman who stopped a falling spacecraft with her bare hands.

Like a woman who saved his life.

The feeling swells in Steve’s chest, overwhelming him. She isn’t supposed to save his life. She is supposed to save _the world_.

“Forget about me!” he yells back. “You have a mission!” His voice is harsh with an accusation undercut by gratitude and no small amount of fear.

Diana’s attention snaps to the swirling sky above. Then, with two fingers clamped on the back of his tactical suit, she plucks him out of the cockpit and out of the path of light. 

* * *

They roll into a snowbank.

Steve moves to protect Diana’s bare skin from the freezing cold, only to find she’s burning with a heat so strong the snow dissolves around her.

Scrabbling to his feet, Steve yells in the general direction of the roaring boom tube, “Why isn’t it closed?” He wheels on Diana, who stands. Her chin is set as she looks upon the vortex with displeasure. But she doesn’t spring into action. “Why aren’t you closing it?”

“The immediate need has been dealt with,” she explains, regret deepening her voice. She’s the type to weep for her enemies, and Steve’s chest constricts at the kindness. “Before I can summon the strength again to seal the gateway, I need rest.” Exhaustion is etched on her perfect face.

“You had the strength,” Steve shoots back. The guilt gnawing at him only intensifies with his feeble attempt to redirect it. “If you hadn’t come after me—”

“Steve.” His name is a plea this time. “I couldn’t let you—” Diana wobbles on her feet.

Rushing to help her, Steve forgets her skin is on fire from the inside and pulls back with a low hiss of pain.

Diana wheels away from him, falling onto her back. Steam curls above her. Snow melts around her outstretched arms and legs, creating the perfect snow angel.

Steve arcs over her, anxious.

“Steve,” she exhales, lips curving with a fondness he hasn’t earned. Her eyelashes flutter shut.

Leaving Steve alone with an open portal to a hostile, alien world. Not to mention stranded a thousand miles from civilization, let alone backup.

But alive. Thanks to Diana of Themyscira and the ghost who haunts them both.


	2. Survivor's Guilt

Extreme survival exercises are what Steve considers casual weekend plans, so it doesn’t take him long to get his bearings.

The boom tube still blazes but, true to Diana’s word, not a single alien rock comes through, let alone an army. The spacecraft was severed by the interdimensional vortex, and it’s from the twisted remains that Steve pulls out supplies. Using a strangely viscous rope material, he fashions a section of metal into an impromptu sled for Diana. The snow has cooled her off enough that he can lift her, ever so gently, onto a crinkly space blanket. He wraps her up well, despite the fact that she seems immune to the cold even in normal circumstances.

Hibernating demi-goddess secure, Steve tests his sat phone but finds it’s been scrambled by his trip across the universe. Given they started that little jaunt in New Mexico, he’s not holding his breath for an ARGUS rescue. Part of the trouble with boom tubes is they don’t show up on Earthling radar, meaning the only way they’re going to be spotted is by eyes in the sky. With clear blue rapidly going an ominous gray, Steve is wise enough not to count on that.

So Steve eats the one energy bar he had strapped to his tactical belt, ropes the sled to his waist, and heads south.

* * *

Turns out the thousand-miles-from-civilization bit was just Steve feeling sorry for himself. By nightfall, he makes it to a small village. The trip would have been even quicker had he not been dragging some surprisingly hefty precious cargo.

The villagers, having seen the boom tube and wisely kept away, are skeptical of Steve’s military jargon-infused Russian and alien supplies. As a last resort, he flips the space blanket open to reveal Diana’s sleeping form. Awed murmurs of “Chudo-zhenshchina” sweep the small crowd. Wonder Woman is known and loved the world over, as she should be.

From that introduction, they’re given lodging in a cabin behind an abandoned Red Army outpost station and enough supplies for a week. When Steve tries to protest their generosity, the village leader, whose stern face is mapped by grizzled wrinkles and framed by fur, points at the thick flakes coming down from the sky.

 _“Blizzard_?” Steve asks in Russian, grim.

 _“Ice storm_ ,” she replies. The elder woman nods at Diana. “ _Watch over her_ ,” she orders, sounding not unlike Waller, and leaves him to his work.

* * *

Steve has a fire up and rolling and a simple stew on by the time Diana so much as stirs. Her mouth twitches, beginning to move. The words she forms with her lips are soundless at first. Within the quarter hour, she’s murmuring in her sleep in a language he doesn’t know. He catches the name _Athena_ and realizes its a prayer. The rest of it is presumably Ancient Greek.

He searches her regal face, finding mild signs of distress. He’s made her as comfortable as possible, laying out furs over the stone floor and setting her up on pillows. The ancient trappings render her as ageless as Steve supposes she must be. Daughter of Zeus and the Queen of the Amazons and all that.

To fill out an ARGUS intake form, he’d once asked her to verify her backstory. A touch of humor had lightened her solemn expression when she replied, _My mother sculpted me from clay, and I was brought to life by Zeus_. Steve hesitated a stunned moment before remembering his professionalism and writing that down. She’d stopped him, apologizing. More solemn than ever, she explained, _Private joke_. He held her gaze—her gaze that looked straight through him into a private, painful past—for as long as he could stomach it.

Steve doesn’t think he’s looked at Diana for this long since. It’s difficult, even when she’s not looking back. Beneath her pinched lids, her eyes move restlessly as her voice picks up. Under the crackle of burning logs, he hears his own name as a pleading whisper.

He shivers. Steve gets up, falls asleep on a hard-backed chair, needing some distance.

* * *

When Steve wakes up, Diana is looking out the front window at the howling mass of snow and ice. He doesn’t know how long she’s been awake, but a blanket is tucked around him.

Hearing him stir, she says, “I’m ready to seal the gateway.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s not an immediate threat,” he echoes her. “It can wait for the storm to pass.” He blinks at the almost opaque whiteness beyond the thick window. “Hell, I don’t know if you could _find_ it in this, massive swirly light thing or no.”

Diana inclines her chin. “If that is your recommendation, Commander.”

He blinks. Takes in the stiffness in her baring. Decides it’s less...fraught than the alternative. “There are books in the office,” he offers, nodding toward one of two doors leading off from the main room. “I’m sure your Cyrillic is miles above mine.”

“Thank you,” she says, her tone indicating she’s thanking him for much more than a compliment or a suggestion. Her attention falls on the makeshift sled.

“It’s my job,” he replies with more emphasis than necessary.

With what seems like great effort, Diana swallows a retort and, once again, inclines that stubborn chin.

Silence stretches out between them. By mutual agreement, they pretend it’s a comfortable one. They move around each other, acting like wide berths are possible in such close quarters. They are professionals. Polite and cordial.

* * *

It takes only the slightest provocation for them to get into it with each other.

Steve nicks his finger cutting potatoes for dinner. Diana tells him to be more careful. Steve takes issue to the insinuation that he’s care _less_ and sets down the knife to better explain to her why going through the boom tube was necessary. She listens, albeit with a skeptical eyebrow cocked, until he concludes, “If someone has to die—”

“No one has to die,” Diana cuts in, every syllable emphasized by her conviction.

For a golden-perfect moment, Steve loses his ability to argue with her. Her eyes are luminous, the tilt of her head is fierce. He is easily persuaded because he believes this, too. Or at least a version of it—No one  _else_ has to die, not if he can help it.

Steve shakes his head, finding he can argue again so long as he’s not looking at her straight-on. In his steadiest tactician’s voice, he says, “If the choice is you dead or me dead—”

“That’s no kind of choice,” Diana says. Her hands are on her hips, but she’s straining toward him. “An Amazon protects those who fight by her side—”

“Diana, all I’m saying is—”

Tenderness pinches her features. “Steve, you’re suggesting my life is more valuable than yours. You cannot believe that. I certainly don't.”

“Believe it or not, it’s the truth.” At her shaking head, Steve throws up his hands. “Of _course_ it is. If it’s down to you,” he gestures, “or me, it _has_ to be me!”

Tears glimmer in Diana’s eyes, darkening them into deep wells. “Stop saying that.” Her voice rises as she croaks, “You always say that!”

Steve’s hands go to his hair in frustration. “I’ve _never_ said that before!”

Diana grips her elbows like she’s trying to get a grip on her patience. “In Belgium—”

His own patience snaps under the pressure of poorly-suppressed anger. “I’ve never been to Belgium!” Steve yells. “I’m not—not a pilot from the First World War! I’m not—It’s not _me_ standing beside you in that photograph, you understand? You’re not saving  _him_ —” Steve waves his arms at the ether and pulls them back to himself “—by saving _me_. You’re not. I’m sorry.” The apology comes out glibber than he meant it to.

But, damn it, it needed to be said. Only then does Diana remember to avert her anguished stare. Tears splash concrete. And only then does Steve remember that this whole fucked up situation is hell for Diana most of all.

Steve repeats, “I’m sorry.” It comes out anything but glib.

* * *

Walking away from Diana consists of taking six steps to a cramped office and closing the door behind him. Steve regrets it almost instantly, and not just because of the chill. And not just because, within five minutes, there’s a soft knock.

Steve gives himself to the count of twenty to hold his head in his hands before straightening and telling her to come in.

“I’ve done you a disservice,” Diana tells him, clearly getting ready for a speech.

“No, no,” he interrupts. “It’s—” What? Fine? It’s not fine. “It’s not your fault. Or mine. It’s—”

“A punishment from the gods,” Diana concludes.

For a split-second, Steve has never been more offended in his life. His entire existence can’t be written off as some _trial_ —

But then Diana sinks into the chair opposite the desk so forlorn he knows she couldn’t have meant it like that. Steve has to wince when her bare thighs touch the freezing metal. He wants to carry her back to fire and bundle her up in warm furs. He wants to kneel before her and beg her forgiveness for disappointing her. For letting his pride make him so damned irritable.

Because, if he knows anything, the cosmic joke is definitely on him.

Voice no less soft for how incredulous he is, Steve asks, “What could you possibly need to be punished for?”

Diana shrugs, fingers twisting in her lap. He’s never seen her so human before. He can picture her a little girl. A wave of earnest affection rolls through him. He wants to know her story, beyond the intake form. He wants her to know him, even though he knows he won’t be much by comparison.

“We don’t know each other,” Steve says, testing the waters. When she doesn’t disagree, he suggests, “We could try to. If you want.” Tries to keep it casual. “It’s not like there’s a TV.”

The smile Diana gifts him with is visibly tamped down, which he appreciates. He’s nowhere near ready for the full-wattage version to be turned on him.


	3. More Time

They sip tea in front of the fire. Diana wants to know everything about him. Steve wants something stronger to gulp down.

After swallowing, he says, “Well.” He presses his thumb into a wide chip on the rim of the mug. “My name is Steven Howard Trevor. I was born in 1982.” He tries to make a joke: “That should be enough to differentiate us.” Fails.

Looking chastised, Diana prompts, “Tell me more.”

“Like…” When Steve glances up, Diana is looking him square in the eye, waiting patiently. “Like…I grew up on farm.” A slight wince and vague family lore remind him Steven Rockwell Trevor had, too. So he leans hard into childhood nostalgia. “I was obsessed with _GI Joe_ as a kid. Uh, my mom auditioned my sister and me for _Star Search_ three times each. Oh, I met Lee Roy Selmon, legendary defensive tackle, and almost hyperventilated in a Wendy’s parking lot.”

Diana is warming up to this exercise just as Steve is. Diana seems for all the world like she’s riveted by these inanities. Her eyes sparkle, and a flush spreads through him.

Equal parts pleased and embarrassed, Steve gets more succinct. “A, uh, highlight reel of my life might include the following—” He ticks memories off on his fingers. “I caught the State Championship-winning touchdown for Guthrie High School in 2000. I got dumped in 2007 by the girl I thought I was going to marry. I lost my best friend in combat in 2012, and I became the godfather of his child in 2013. Same year I became an uncle.” Steve taps on his mug, trying hard not to get too lost in the past. “Highs and lows, I guess.”

“I’m so sorry, Steve,” Diana murmurs.

“It’s the job,” he replies, leaning forward. He doesn’t want to upset her again. He just needs her to understand. “When I joined ARGUS, I swore to lay my life down for the Justice League. To die for you, if necessary.”

“I don’t want you to die for me, Steve,” Diana says, voice hoarse and miserable. But so fierce. “I want you to _live_.”

 _For me—_ Steve’s mind fills in the unspoken words. Unspoken except by yearning. Hers or his?

No use denying it. He yearns for her in the hollow of his chest where everything he thinks he knows about himself feels all of a sudden small and incomplete. Like there’s so much more to him, and only Diana sees it. Steve wonders if he ever will. Who he’ll be if he does.

* * *

Steve insists—with far too much enthusiasm—that he wants to sleep on the chair. Even as ancient springs dig into his lower back, he relates how comfortable he is. Really.

Diana surveys him with a skeptical brow. “There are plenty of cushions,” she tells him. There is plenty of room, too. Right beside her. When she drums her fingers on the open spot, Steve recognizes a nervous tell.

It’s the opposite of his own: mouth open, nonsense spilling out. “Honestly, I, uh, I sleep better upright. Good for the—” His attempt to correct his posture ends in a wince. “The back. Besides, I wouldn’t ever...”

Softness spreads across Diana’s face with a smile. “Presume?” It’s too reverent to be anything less than memory.

Steve’s temper isn’t what causes a flush to creep up his neck. In the firelight, in that repose, Diana is every inch a goddess pleased. These unwitting callbacks cost Steve something, but isn’t that the way of worship?

Diana’s smile falters. She seems to correct herself with a slight shake of her head. “I meant we should split the cushions,” she continues, brusque now and moving with the kind of efficiency Steve needs to return him to reality.

Within a few minutes, he is bedded down on the opposite side of the fireplace. Diana’s back is toward him, her outline blurring as sleep takes him.

In his dreams, he knows how the silk of her hair will feel between his fingers. How the skin at her throat will smell of violets. How her mouth will taste of ambrosia.

* * *

Steve stumbles into the closet that passes for a bathroom, finding the subzero temperatures a blessing. Bracing cold is the only thing that can jar him out of the fantasies his damned lizard brain conjured up all night long. A crystal-clear image of Diana, naked and arching over him, is lodged in his mind, and he’s having a hell of a hard time getting it through his thick skull that it isn’t real. A sink bath with near-Arctic waters is his penance.

Steve steps out of the bathroom the same time Diana steps out of the office—and his lizard brain reactivates in an instant.

She has fashioned herself something like a toga. The sheet is less revealing than her armor, but that technicality means next to nothing once he realizes the whole getup is held together by a clothespin.

“We should make ourselves comfortable. We will be here at least another day,” Diana says, gesturing to the flurry of white out the window.

Finding his voice, Steve says, “I’ll get us more firewood,” and flees to the refuge of a blizzard.

* * *

When Steve returns to the back porch with an armful of pre-chopped wood, Diana is leaning against a banister enjoying the swirl of white. Steve shakes off her move to help him and takes his time stacking his load by the door.

He frowns at the wool socks and threadbare blanket she wears haphazardly like he’d throw on a pair of flip-flops and a drape a towel over his shoulders before hitting the beach. Cold is relative to a demigoddess, but the instinct to wrap her in his own body heat rises up against reason. Reason, Steve is beginning to accept, has very little impact on his feelings for Diana. “I’m going into hyperthermic shock just looking at you,” he mutters, helpless.

Diana tilts her chin down to where Steve is sweeping off the snow that gathered on his fur cap. The corners of her lips tuck up. “You look like a little boy,” Diana counters, making a liar out of Steve with the way her gaze heats him up.

“Ushankas are military issue,” Steve protests, puffing out his chest and saluting her from one earflap.

“Yes, I remember the Cold War,” Diana replies, and Steve does feel young.

Young, new. Fresh. He leans forward on his toes. “If it weren’t so windy, I’d challenge you to a snowball fight.”

With mock gravity, Diana replies, “That would be unwise of you.” Her lips curve higher.

A grin unfurls across Steve’s face, and it’s reflected in the brightening light of Diana’s eyes.

She relaxes against the post, one bare hand reaching beyond the slanted roof to catch snowflakes in her cupped palm. “I’ve known of snow for a century,” she tells him. “Every time it is…”

The word she bites back is on the tip of Steve’s tongue. He knows she means to say _magical_ with as much certainty as he knows her body—an inexplicable, impossible, insidious certainty. He offers something he thinks might be closer to the truth after all these years: “Wistful. Snow has always made me feel wistful. I’ve never known why.”

Diana could tell him why, Steve thinks. She only nods, tries, “Wistful,” on her tongue. Concludes, “That is a new way of thinking about it.”

Her lips are still turned up at the corners. Steve’s ears are still burning.

A perfect snowflake lands on Diana’s index finger and she laughs. Delight makes her young, old experience new again. The world fresh.

* * *

After breakfast, they spend the day reading—Diana a thick volume of Pushkin and Steve a thin newspaper he struggles through. It’s been awhile since his foreign language qualifying exams, but Diana is a patient tutor.

At his comment to that effect, Diana snorts so loudly Steve jerks the newspaper down in surprise. “I was an unholy terror to my tutors,” Diana confides.

Steve grins like the besotted idiot he is. “I don’t believe you,” he says just so Diana will be compelled to give him numerous examples.

Themyscira is a paradise, it doesn’t take Steve long to conclude. A Platonic ideal with a Sapphic twist he’s safest not commenting on. Pushkin set aside, Diana tells Steve about her long hours of secret training with her aunt. She tells him about her mother’s stories. Her favorite horse. The bright stars that stayed fixed for centuries.

In exchange for more stories, Steve fixes Diana her first brinner—pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns. He sacrifices the rest of the milk to make the thick, black coffee drinkable. He reads Lois Lane’s syndicated column translated into Russian out loud and never feels for a second that Diana is doing anything but laughing with him.

* * *

Only after they are stuffed and cozy, sharing a cushion in front of the fire, does Steve have the courage to make the request that has been building in his chest. “Tell me something,” he says to the floorboards, “that you never told _him_.”

At his side, Diana stills. After a long moment, she says, “Telling you everything I did say to him would take less time.” She sets down her mug to draw her knees to her as if to shield from a confession: “I only knew him for a week.”

Steve keeps his head down even as the revelation shoots through him. A _week_.

Diana’s voice retreats to somewhere far away. “And I’ve carried his memory for a hundred years. You must think me a fool. Bruce does—”

Waving away the specter of Bruce Wayne, Steve says, “No, no—no. I don’t. I’m…” He can’t describe what he thinks. Just the idea of that level of devotion aches like envy but burns like pure love. “I’m—in awe. I can’t imagine—” He swallows. That’s not true. He _can_ imagine, he just hasn’t let himself. Before now. “I mean, my God. You must have loved him.”

Diana replies, further away still, “One of many things I never told him.”

Steve clutches his wrist, kneads at his bare skin. “But he told you.” It isn’t a guess so Steve says it as fact. The breath Diana sucks in shudders through Steve. If they’re making confessions, he has one of his own. “I’ve been in love with you since before we met. So he must have meant it.”

When Steve looks up, Diana’s attention is riveted on him. The past and the present blur, unsettling him. But giving him, too, the strength to see a future.


	4. A Good Life

Visions of a future flicker away as Diana clambers up with a soft groan.  

Steve gets to his knees to stop her, the urgency of the present the only thing on his mind when he takes the sides of her face between his hands. Like a reflex, his thumbs find the sweep of her cheekbones and her hands clasp his wrists. He doesn’t let her push him away. 

Because he knows from the kindness inside of her that she’s trying to do right by him. And he knows from the agony on her face that it’s breaking her heart. She whispers, “Please, let me go.”

“I don’t want to,” Steve says, giving into the freeing joy of that truth. 

Diana flinches back, grip falling to his elbows. “You never had a choice.”

“I did—I do,” Steve says, his hands threading through her dark hair. He grins. “I chose to say no to Waller when she asked me to pretend to be  _ him _ . I chose to keep my distance because of  _ him _ . But then  _ I  _ got to know you, and I—” Steve draws in a steadying breath. 

Diana’s hands lift, ever so slowly, to caress his face.

Steve leans into her touch, eyes closed to remember and to savor. “This feels so familiar,” he murmurs, “and brand new, and—God, Diana—I don’t care which.” He hesitates. “Not if you don’t.”

Diana kisses him then—silk and violets and ambrosia.

* * *

In the afterglow, they lay tucked together watching the flames dance above the logs. For a long, perfect stretch, Steve’s entire world spans the length of Diana’s body pressed into his and encompasses this dim, cozy room.

As the howling of the wind picks up, Steve can’t keep the outside world from intruding on his thoughts. They blow from what Diana would look like sprawled beneath him on hot sand to how many private islands Bruce Wayne probably owns to whether Diana would know that information off the top of her head to why it is, logically and ethically, none of Steve’s business if she does.

He thinks of the dressing down he will receive from Director Waller. All the many reasons he doesn’t give a damn if this ends in a demerit and the one reason he does: if he is demerited, someone less careful, less attune may run tactical point on Wonder Woman ops.

The future Steve glimpsed twists in the flames, never staying still. He worries the inside of his cheek over two words:  _ What now? _

* * *

Stretching as she rouses, Diana rolls in Steve’s arms to shine that beatific smile down on him. Doubt doesn’t touch her eyes, as much as Steve searches for it. His own doubts are amplified by her surety. By the loving way she strokes his face.

A worry sits on the tip of his tongue. He has to kiss her once, twice before he has the courage to find his voice. “I don’t…” Steve swallows the small, selfish part of him that wants to hold onto Diana by any means. “I don’t want to give you false hope. I don’t—You feel familiar,” he says, unable to abide her mistaking him for a liar. “You do. But I don’t...remember.” He licks his lips. Nerves. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

Diana continues to stroke his face. Her eyes soften with acceptance.

Steve rests his hand overtop hers, squeezing. “I want to remember. For you. But I also—” Here he has to avert his gaze to her chin. Admitting cowardice to the bravest person in the world is no easy thing. “I worry about who  _ I’ll _ be. If I’ll be...less _me_  if—if I remember.”

When he hazards a glance back up at her, Diana seems to be measuring her words. “That has been one of the most challenging aspects for me, I think.” She sighs, scooting closer to cradle his cheek on the soft warmth of her chest. “Perhaps you don’t want to hear this.”

Steve shakes his head against her skin. Diana wants to tell him, so he’ll listen. 

Her thumb finds the curve of his cheek. “It isn’t just your face that is the same. Oh, there are differences, of course.” Diana runs a hand over his shoulder and down his side to trace the raised tissue there. “Scars out of place.” Her hand drifts lower, until she reaches the base of his softened but not sated cock. She draws her fingernails along the underside, eliciting a moan he buries in her chest. “Modern sensibilities,” she teases.

Popping up, he waggles his eyebrows. “So modern.”

The plush smile Diana gives Steve is imminently kissable. Perhaps he doesn’t want to hear it, not yet. Not when the present is so perfect. By consensus, they lose themselves in each other again. 

* * *

Steve pushes himself onto his side, still dazed. Forever dazed. “I can hardly look at you,” he marvels. He could count her eyelashes if he weren’t too overwhelmed by her  _ presence _ to concentrate on just one feature.

Diana’s breath touches his lips as she replies, “I have observed you very closely. Too closely for your comfort, I’m sure.”

As a reflex, Steve tightens his hold on Diana. If he was uncomfortable, it was out of fear that he’d never be able to get close enough. “What were you going to say?”

Diana takes a moment to think. Resolved, she says, “You are you, Steve. I understand your fears. At least I try to. But I cannot help seeing…“ She sweeps his bangs out of his eyes. “Your manner, your morals—your essence, I suppose.” Diana presses her hand over his thumping heart. “You are the man I love.”

Bombs have gone off in Steve’s vicinity that have affected him less than that statement. His whole body reverberates with shock and awe.

Not finished, Diana continues, “The man I—” Her eyes flicker downward. “Led into death.” The hitch in her voice catches in his own throat.

“Hey. Hey, if this—if the Steve Trevor of 1918 is...” He can’t bring himself to say  _ me _ , as true as it might seem to her. Lamely, he finishes, “...of my essence, then you didn’t lead him anywhere he didn’t follow with a full heart.”

Diana smiles, her eyes gathering wetness and shining in the flickering firelight. 

Steve holds her as she mourns for a man who is not him. Could never be him. Because how could anyone with his manner, his morals deserve a century of love from such a woman? Nevermind a second chance to bask in it.

* * *

Steve wakes to gentle fingers at his nape. He lifts his head from where he burrowed it in the sweet-smelling curve of Diana’s neck. Last night, they set themselves up facing the window so Diana could see the moment the skies cleared, and it seems as if the dawn has broken the storm.

He squeezes his eyes shut, ostensibly to rub the sleep out of them. He’d like not to open them. He’d like to stay here, on the stone floor of this dingy outpost, for the rest of his life—if the woman in his arms would only stay with him.

Diana moves to stand, and Steve lets her go. She has mission.

“You’ll close the portal now?” His voice is rough. He has to close one eye just to squint up at her. Sunlight pours around her and—yeah okay, universe. He gets already. She angel. Him mortal. No need to rub it in.

Diana gives a slight shake of her head. “We will,” she says, and extends a hand out to him. 

A tug of gratitude and maybe—hopefully, even—a hint of deja vu tugs a smile all the way across Steve’s face. He slides his hand into hers and lets her pull him to his feet. 

He’s even the one after he’s burrowed into a snowsuit to open the door and let the wind intrude on their warm little oasis. As fondly as they’ll remember this place, seclusion in Siberia isn’t either of their styles. And, besides,  _ they _ have a mission.

* * *

It occurs to Steve as he watches Diana gather up her last bit of strength to send a massive energy wave up the boom tube, destroying it for the good of the villagers cheering her on, that none of this can be about what he deserves.

_ Diana _ deserves a second chance. 

Diana  _ deserves _ a love that spans lifetimes—a love fit for a goddess. 

From the moment Steve set eyes on Diana, in this life or any other, his first instinct has been to worship her. 

That, Steve vows as he slips his arms around Diana’s gasping frame and helps her to her feet, is a purpose he will gladly die and fiercely  _ live _ for.


End file.
